An upstart trade group’s PR coup, an iconic theater saved by Hollywood’s A-list and an unwanted honor for New Jersey. From the wild and wooly world of real estate, here are the Hits and Misses for the week of Feb. 19-23.
Hit: The Voice of the Industry? Real estate professionals watching “The Claman Countdown” on Fox Business News this week may have been surprised to see Jason Haber and Mauricio Umansky as guest experts for a segment on the housing market. (See above photo) Haber and Umansky are the co-founders of the American Real Estate Association (AREA), which they are trying to position as a trade organization alternative to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Credit goes to Haber and Umansky’s public relations representatives for booking this high-profile interview, which was also featured prominently among the clickbait headlines on the Microsoft landing page. And let this be a warning to NAR – if that group doesn’t engage in more proactive PR, the loud crunching sound you may be hearing will be AREA eating NAR’s proverbial lunch.
Hit: Hooray for Hollywood. Another nice surprise this week involved director Jason Reitman leading a coalition of 35 A-list filmmakers in a new coalition to acquire the Village Theater, the iconic 93-year-old Los Angeles cinema. According to IndieWire, the new owners plan to upgrade the historic venue and will present both first-run and classic films in 35mm, 70mm and digital projection along with movie history memorabilia exhibitions. Among the directors involved in this project are JJ Abrams, Judd Apatow, Bradley Cooper, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Christopher Nolan, Alexander Payne, Todd Phillips, Seth Rogen, Steven Spielberg, Denis Villeneuve and Chloé Zhao.
Miss: This Is Justice? Perhaps the most embarrassing news story of the week involved New York Attorney General Letitia James’ arrogant boast that her office will seize the real estate assets of former President Donald Trump if he fails to pay the $354 million-plus penalty enacted against him in a civil fraud trial over the alleged over-valuation of his properties. James claimed that “if average New Yorkers went into a bank and submitted false documents, the government would throw the book at them, and the same should be true for former presidents.” Never mind that all the lenders who originated loans to Trump engaged in their own due diligence over the former president’s applications and Trump didn’t default on any of the loans. Would it be cynical to opine that James’ public threat makes it seem like she is auditioning to be a replacement for Merrick Garland as the U.S. Attorney General if Biden wins re-election in November?
Miss: When a Hospital is Sick. Earlier this week, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey recommended that the Dallas-headquartered Steward Health Care transfer its Bay State hospitals to new operators “as soon as possible.” According to the Boston Globe, the governor also complained that Steward has “not been forthcoming, truthful or responsive” about its financial health. If you haven’t read our new Person of the Week interview with Rob Simone of Hedgeye Risk Management about the problems impacting Steward and its parent company, Medical Properties Trust, please take a few minutes to read it – this is one of the most troubling stories in both the healthcare real estate sector and the real estate investment trust sector.
Miss: Greetings from the (Expensive) Jersey Shore. New Jersey is nicknamed the Garden State, but according to a new WalletHub data study it could also be dubbed the Property Tax State. New Jersey led the nation with a 2.33% effective real estate tax rate – its median home value is $401,400, which makes the annual taxes on homes prices at state median value at $9,345. The state with the lowest property taxes is Hawaii, with a 0.27% effective real estate tax rate – which is 8.7 times lower than the rate in New Jersey. What does Hawaii know that New Jersey doesn’t?
Miss: Operator, Will You Help Me Place This Call? The big tech story of the week was the temporary nationwide network disruption that impacted AT&T customers yesterday. Mercifully, the abrupt disappearance of phone service was not a cyberattack – the company told ABC News that the outage came because of “the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network.” And while this incident is not unique to the real estate world, it should serve as a reminder for all businesses to ensure they have back-up telecommunications plans in the event of a high-tech meltdown beyond their immediate control.
Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].
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Re: your comment on New York, Attorney General Letitia James enforcing the law. The fraud that was committed over and over again for a period of years IS the crime, or in this case, crimes. It does not matter that he did not default on these particular loans. It does not matter that the banks have the right to their own due diligence. The repeated misrepresentation (fraud) is the crime. You don’t seem to understand that.
If the banks did not want to make the loans, they had the right to deny them based on the supposedly over stated value of teh property. Since they did not they must have agreed with the stated values on his application.
Since when is Laticia James more knowlgable about Real Estate values in New York than Mr. Trump and the Bank’s Underwriters, who approved his loans?